A Journey (80 page)

Of course, in a rational world, it would be a personal tragedy. It would be explained by the pressure on him. It would be treated as an isolated event. I knew there was not the slightest chance of that happening in our media climate. It would be treated as a Watergate-style killing. It would provoke every manner of conspiracy theory. It would give permission for any and every fabrication of context, background and narrative. The media would declare it was a scandal. They were absolutely capable of ensuring there was one.

I often go over the decision to hold the inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death, taken in those early hours, exhausted, on the flight across the Pacific, by means of the unsecured plane phone. I spoke to Charlie Falconer, who had succeeded Derry as Lord Chancellor. He agreed to find a judge. It had to be someone utterly impeccable, impartial, someone whom no one could allege was New Labour or even knew us. If necessary, we would do it in public, though I had no idea just how much there would be and how long it would take. Eventually, Charlie came back with the suggestion of Lord Hutton, the former Northern Ireland judge, a law lord, someone who definitely fitted the description. He was indeed, by all accounts, of unimpeachable integrity. We appointed him then and there.

Maybe I should just have slogged it out. Maybe I should have just refused to be overwhelmed by the ferocity of the onslaught. But, though, naturally, I was wanting to clear my name, that wasn’t the main motivation. From the outset, deprived of a real policy attack on New Labour, this alternative attack of being a government of ‘spin’, of ‘deceit’, of me as a ‘liar’, had taken root. It was part of what modern politics was becoming: personal attack, not political debate. In normal circumstances, in debates over the run-of-the-mill type of political issue, such brutal exchanges didn’t go far. It was in the 2001 election that the Tories had first called me ‘Bliar’.

However, this was about a decision to go to war. In this instance, could we really just tough it out? Weren’t we obliged to have it investigated? Maybe. Maybe not. But at that time, I felt: enough is enough. Let it all be brought out in the open. Let us be utterly transparent. Let the truth be told. Then surely, with an objective judgement by a professional judge, people will accept the ruling. Surely. Surely? On balance, I still think it was worth it. Maybe, in time, it will be seen for what it is; but back then, after six diverting months, it was hard to see the positives.

I won’t go through each and every point of the evidence. Read the report, I recommend. It was unprecedented for the prime minister and all senior officials to give evidence like this. There had never been anything like it. It was due to conclude in October. Lord Hutton finally published the report at the end of January 2004. It went over the dossier, its compilation, the role of Alastair, the activities of each minute section of the Ministry of Defence and Downing Street, what Dr Kelly did, and went over it all exhaustively. This was part of the conclusion:

The dossier was prepared and drafted by a small team of the assessment staff of the JIC. Mr John Scarlett, the chairman of the JIC, had the overall responsibility for the drafting of the dossier.

The 45-minutes claim was based on a report which was received by the SIS from a source which that Service regarded as reliable. Therefore, whether or not at some time in the future the report on which the 45-minutes claim was based is shown to be unreliable, the allegation reported by Mr Gilligan on 29 May 2003 that the government probably knew that the 45-minutes claim was wrong before the government decided to put it in the dossier was an allegation which was unfounded.

As the dossier was one to be presented to, and read by, Parliament and the public, and was not an intelligence assessment to be considered only by the government, I do not consider that it was improper for Mr Scarlett and the JIC to take into account suggestions as to drafting made by 10 Downing Street and to adopt those suggestions if they were consistent with the intelligence available to the JIC.

The BBC management was at fault in the following respects in failing to investigate properly the government’s complaints that the report in the 6.07 a.m. broadcast was false that the government probably knew that the 45-minutes claim was wrong even before it decided to put it in the dossier.

There was no dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous strategy by the government covertly to leak Dr Kelly’s name to the media.

What the judge found was all he could find, really, on the evidence. But it was a seminal moment in the way the media behaved.

The judge, of course, had come under the most intense media pressure. He had stood up to it well, but in the days preceding publication I was worried, not about the facts, but about whether he really would feel able to judge on them. Up to that point, the media had been egging him on: he was a man of Ulster granite; he would put the government spin doctors in their place; he would be unafraid to call a lie a lie, etc.

When I was his pupil, Derry used to tell me that there were two types of judges: those who made up their mind, but left loose ends, something for the losing side to cling to, something that expressed the judge’s own inner hesitation about making a clear decision; and those who made up their mind, and once of that view, delivered the decision complete, unadulterated and unvarnished, with every allegation covered and every doubt answered. Lord Hutton was of the latter kind.

It was a comprehensive judgment, comprehensively delivered. Michael Howard, responding to it in the House, stupidly tried to carry on as if the judge hadn’t found as he had, a bad mistake and one which heightened the sense of him as an opportunist who supported the war and, now it was tough, wanted to access some of the anti-war sentiment.

For us, it was a huge relief, but in our relief, we made our own mistake, a serious one with severe consequences. I had been having private conversations with Gavyn Davies throughout, keeping lines open and ensuring our entire relationship with the BBC was not jeopardised. After all, they were the main news outlet of the nation.

We had agreed in the course of these discussions that in the event of the judgment finding fault, we should try to keep the temperature down on both sides. The last of these conversations took place just before Hutton declared his verdict and I reassured Gavyn that we would not be asking for anyone’s head if any in the BBC were criticised.

The day the report was published – 28 January – was hugely busy for us. The close team sat in the Cabinet Room with trepidation and anticipation, awaiting copies which Godric Smith, who had been Alastair’s number two, brought in. I joined them and we scoured the conclusions hungrily and there was an audible collective sigh of relief as we realised he had found in our favour; and then genuine amazement that he had had the courage not to dress it up for the BBC, but to call it as it was.

I then had to prepare my statement to the Commons. It was only the day after we had narrowly survived the tuition-fee vote and both events had taken it out of me. I just wanted to go back to my den and write my statement.

Alastair said he also wanted to do a statement. He had left Downing Street by then, but had come back to receive the report, as one of the main actors in the drama. We were still very close. Reluctantly, I agreed. In fact, I think he would have insisted. He wrote some words out. The statement included a passage about how if he or someone under him had been found guilty of such a thing – the judge had essentially found that the BBC broadcast was not just wrong but they had known it was – heads would have rolled. I took it out, much to his dismay, and he protested vigorously. He couldn’t understand why. As I had agreed with Gavyn, I had told no one about our conversations, apart from Anji. So, Alastair didn’t know why I was so vehement that the passage had to come out.

I had, insensitively and foolishly, not quite appreciated the strain Alastair had been under. He is, as I have said, a highly strung character. Believe it or not, I only really understood this to its full extent when I read his diaries. I hadn’t realised that the months since he had left had been lived in agony about the verdict. Of course, having left Downing Street he didn’t have the all-enveloping nature of the job to distract him. His life had been on hold. Meanwhile, he was still regularly accosted in the street and accused of murdering Dr Kelly, and receiving hate mail, often with bloodstains on it, at his family home. So, for him, this was a moment of enormous emotional release. But all the anger bottled up inside – and Alastair had a lot of that in him – also erupted. He wasn’t thinking, he was lashing out.

When he came to make his statement, which he did with an emotion I could see was inspired by sadness about the whole business, but others would see as revenge on the media he had come to hate, he had put the passage about ‘heads rolling’ back in, in milder form but still there.

Even then, I could have rescued the situation. But I was insufficiently focused on the BBC; rather I was preparing my House of Commons statement, clearing my name and whacking Michael Howard for his opportunism. In any event, I thought Gavyn would call me before doing anything. I made my statement. It went well. I then went on a visit to a college. As I did a doorstep afterwards, I was still unsure exactly what the BBC had decided to do. I should, however, have said there and then that I didn’t want anyone dismissed over it. Instead, I just concentrated on saying all I ever wanted was the withdrawal of a wrong story that reflected on my integrity.

It was a mistake. Gavyn, I think, assumed I had rescinded my side of the bargain, given the severity of the judgment. He and Greg both resigned. I really didn’t want that. Greg was just Greg and was never really suited to the BBC, but Gavyn was a decent and honourable guy and I felt I had let him down.

It also helped provoke the media into a fightback. For about twelve hours, they were stunned. Then, with the Mail Group and the BBC again in alliance – one of the most sorry aspects of the whole affair – they decided to pit their strength against ours. ‘
WHITEWASH
’ screamed the
Daily Mail
headline the next day. The others took it up. Suddenly the man of Ulster granite was a Downing Street lackey, the BBC were victims of the most awful conspiracy and cover-up, and actually didn’t everyone know we were liars anyway? It was wall-to-wall for several days and then topped off with polls showing the public did indeed believe it was a ‘whitewash’. So what should have been a way of lancing the boil of mistrust simply reinforced it and made it more poisonous.

When allegations that we were a government of ‘spin’ are made and I ask for examples, the dossier is always the one that figures. But, I point out, there was an inquiry (one of four) lasting six months that found the opposite. Yes, but it was a ‘whitewash’, as we all know.

The basic problem is that the manner of conducting the political debate does not lend itself to reasonable disagreement between reasonable people. The Gilligan broadcast led the news because it alleged misconduct, a lie, in effect. He thought he had a source, but an allegation that serious should at least, you would have thought, be put to the people against whom it was made. We were never even contacted before it was broadcast. In any event, a mere mistake was never going to lead the news.

Now, in actual fact, it should do. The intelligence was wrong and we should have, and I have, apologised for it. So the real story is a story and a true one. But in today’s environment, it doesn’t have that sensational, outrage-provoking ‘wow’ factor of scandal. Hence an error is made into a deception. And it is this relationship between politics and media which then defines the political debate. The Opposition feel obliged to join in, otherwise they look like patsies. Instead of the debate being between one view of the country and another, it becomes a battle as to who is ‘more honest’ or ‘less deceitful’ than the other, a real mug’s game for most of the time in politics.

But anyway, there it was. More serious, in the end, was the developing situation inside Iraq itself. A proper study of the aftermath will be necessary for its own sake but also, most importantly, for the future. The truth is that the likelihood of British troops being engaged in the defence of British soil is remote. The more probable endeavour will be engagement with others, usually the Americans, in far-off lands that fall victim to extremism. How we deal with such a situation needs critical analysis. The question, unresolved, but urgently requiring resolution, is: to what extent are the challenges we faced and face in Iraq or Afghanistan avoidable; and to what extent are they inevitable given the scale of the mission?

Let me explain this further. What happened in Iraq after May 2003 was, at first, relatively benign. There was looting and some violence; some attacks on coalition forces, but they were containable. I have described how the UN was brought back into the picture. In early July, with UN help, we convened an Iraqi Governing Council. It was a crucial moment. It had twenty-five members: thirteen Shia, eleven Sunni, one Christian. It came out of a process of consultation. It was the first step to the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty. As Sergio Vieira de Mello put it: Iraq was ‘moving back to where it rightfully belongs: at peace with itself and as a full participant in the community of nations’.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, though there were military operations to deal with any lingering Saddamist elements, things were moving to a new state of rebuilding the country, schools reopening, hospitals functioning and police reporting for duty. Down in Basra at the end of June, 17,000 students at the universities took their exams normally.